


Trip Wire

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-04-28 20:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Dean accidentally uncovers something else left over in his father's old storage space...and it sucks.





	1. Trip Wire

Dean knew as soon he ripped open the yellowed packet that it was all bad news.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair and read the small piece of paper that had been contained inside. With a groan, he read it one more time just to make sure.

If he wanted to get technical, it wasn’t really made of paper. The yellow stuff was vellum created from a specially treated animal skin. This one was particularly thin and fragile even though it had been fashioned to last. He flipped it over in the hope that the carefully inked words he had read weren’t still there. The torn envelope it had come in was lying on the table with all the rest of the documents retrieved from the storage space.

Dean had spent the day and all of the night salvaging and sorting their father’s hidden collection into three piles.

To torch.  
To keep.  
To consider.

They couldn’t leave all the treacherous junk lying around for some city inspector to find accidentally one day; or worse, another opportunist entrepreneur who liked to put price tags on things that should be buried. Some of the items were easily lethal, like the dusty artillery and collection of tactical explosives. They were cleared from the shelves first. Dean added a few of the older weapons to their inventory if it looked worth the clean up. A few finds were like the objects in the lock boxes: Unmarked, unexplained and in all probability toxic. However, there was plenty in there that neither Sam nor he knew existed. Some of the stuff had nothing to do with the sinister nature of the flipside at all.

The brothers’ authentic birth certificates were shuffled in with old insurance papers. Dean wasn’t aware he had a middle name and he was happy to leave the one he found to remain lost. Another puzzling find amongst the clutter were a few rotted cardboard boxes filled with loose documents. Half of them made no sense at all, seeming to be unorganized pieces from forgeries for identification and property.

The rest were random notes and pages like the one Dean held in his hand.

He flipped the card between his fingertips and let out a deep sigh. The fragile envelope he’d opened as casually as a phone bill was much more than a harmless scrap of paper. Dean glared at the symbols slashed across its surface. He wanted to crumple it into a ball and toss it into the fireplace but that wouldn’t help: not now anyway. It was much too late for any straightforward resolutions.

He let his forehead thud on the table.

“Shit.”

Dean had only just managed to convince Sam to get some rest about an hour ago. He had to admit, the intriguing stash of their father’s belongings was hard to walk away from even though he was just as exhausted. As much as he had insisted his brother was being a moron for forcing himself to stay awake, he couldn’t seem to follow his own good advice.

Sam had dusted off a sorry looking mattress and dragged it up the stairs with not so much as a ‘goodnight’. He hadn’t looked back, and Dean hadn’t seen him since. Which brought him to the problem at hand.

“Shit,” Dean repeated.

The card spun across the table and landed at a perfect tilt. Like the minute hand of a timepiece, it was a subtle reminder the clock was ticking. One look at his watch told him the stupid piece of paper was right. From the moment he’d read the thing to now, he’d wasted 15 minutes and he didn’t have a whole lot of time left if he wanted to prepare himself for what was to follow. But, first things first.

Dean stood up and stretched, draining the last of his warm beer and chucking the can into the overflowing trash.

He had to wake up his brother.

Sam wasn’t going to like the reason why either.

 

 

 

 

Sam grimly studied the piece of paper safely tucked back in its protective envelope.

As his brother slowly walked around the table Dean noted that Sam was wisely not even touching the thing. Slumping down in a chair, he wondered ruefully whether this night would have gone differently if he didn't happen to have a high tolerance for large amounts of beer. If he were a lightweight he would have landed in bed hours ago whether he wanted to or not. He might not have even starting searching through that last tattered folder of miscellaneous crap.

Hell, he might not even have ended up finding it at all.

“Well... did... did you really look at it?” Sam leaned down to examine it sideways. “All of it?”

“Oh yeah,” Dean quickly affirmed. “I really read it.”

“Are you sure?”

“As a fortune cookie.”

His brother’s fists slammed into the table, venting frustration he had been attempting to keep in check.

“But, why?” Sam’s pained demand sounded more like a plea. “Why would you ...do that?”

Dean wasn’t real pleased with the situation either. His own irritation at the unfortunate turn of events caused his own aggravation to rise up and match his brother’s. But instead of swinging a punch like he wanted, he stood up and shoved back his chair loudly into a wall. The dent in the plaster made him feel a little better, but not by a whole lot.

“How was I supposed to know?” He demanded back. “How was I supposed to know I wasn’t supposed to read it unless I read that I wasn’t supposed to?”

Sam opened and shut his mouth.

“See?” Dean pointed. “Ain’t so simple now, is it?”

“But, but it would have changed you by now, made you into something kind of—“

Sam’s sentence trailed into silence as their eyes met. That was the question that neither one of them knew the answer to. Curses scribbled on cards were common enough, but their affects were limited. Usually, handwritten notes couldn’t turn a man into beast for eternity. However, these specially inked and preserved curses could cause their own vile brands of trouble.

"B-But you don't look...” Sam trailed off again in uncertainty. “Something should have happened by now."

That was the kicker.

Unless you were the one that wrote the thing, it was impossible to tell what that change would entail. Unfortunately, the crazy bitch who'd penned this charming greeting card probably died over three hundred years ago.

“It only lasts a day,” Sam suddenly remembered. “These curses always last a sun up and sun down.”

“Not so bad,” Dean picked his fallen chair up and sagged back in it. “I could use some time off anyway.”

“But maybe it didn’t even work? These things are supposed to take effect upon sight. That’s why they’re shielded in those sachets.”

“I thought that was a little weird too,” Dean said. “So I looked around at some more of dad’s stuff.”

“And?”

“And according to this book,” Dean tapped a dusty tome in the pile scattered on the table. “The whammy can take a while to soak in.”

“Soak in.” Sam repeated. “That means—“

“That means I don’t have a ton of time to chat about it, Sam.”

Dean withdrew his revolver and rolled the barrel. Leaving the ammunition in a neat pile, he slid out his blade and laid it down on the table beside them.

“You put me downstairs and you don’t let me get past this front door.”

He wasn’t precisely sure what the curse entailed. All he knew was that it could alter the nature of any man’s soul and according to his brother, it would only last one day. Dean wasn’t sure if he’d inherit a new set of fancy fangs or an overwhelming urge to write gothic poetry, but whatever it was; it was an unknown situation that had to be treated accordingly. He felt through his pockets for anything he might have missed: A pocketknife, a book of matches, a sheathed razor blade.

“This is crazy,” Sam swallowed.

“Sure is,” Dean agreed as he found the forgotten .32 strapped to his ankle. “Think of it like, I dunno, I just was exposed to some extremely hazardous materials. Instead of a humiliating strip down by those guys with high pressure hoses, I get the fun of being locked up in a basement.”

Sam watched the careful gun disassembly, but Dean knew when his brother’s mind was elsewhere. The heavy silence meant that brain was running at around 500mph to comply a logical series of actions which would result in a solution to the current situation. The thing was that Dean had been doing some pondering on that problem himself. More often than not, they both tended to reach the same conclusions no matter how many different twists and turns their minds might make.

“We’ll call Bobby.” Sam said. “He knew all about dad’s lock boxes so maybe he knows about this one too.”

“I called him already.”

“And?” Sam held out his hands in exasperation. “What did he say?”

“He said he’d call me back.”

“When?”

Dean slammed down the hand piece a little harder than he intended.

“He’ll call when he knows something we don’t.”

“We can call someone else.”

Dean was used to hearing his brother’s anger get mixed up in his fear. It was hard to sort one from the other if you weren’t paying attention.

“We can call Joshua, or Ellen, hell we could even call Bela if we have to because we can’t just sit around and—“

Dean looked up at Sam’s odd and abrupt silence.

“What?” Dean asked. “What is it?”

“You,” Sam sounded almost apologetic. “You look … different.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Dean caught the cloudy broken corner of a wall mirror that once covered the living room wall. At first, Dean couldn’t discern anything unusual from his creased jeans, three day used T-shirt and the usual lack of sleep on his face. However, as he peered closer he saw the look of his eyes wasn’t quite the norm.

They weren’t green.

The pupils had changed to a flat dull orange.

“Looks like we’d better hurry this along,” Dean suggested.

 

 

As soon as Dean got a good look at the basement, he knew it wouldn’t work.

He knew himself, and this cellar had no real possibility of containing him. On a good day, he could bust out of this place with his eyes closed. If some black mojo was about to cross all his wires he’d need a lot more than a door to keep in him in one place. For all he knew this curse was going to create a high-powered desire to leave the immediate premises in search of human brains. The single latch door at the top of the stairs wasn’t going to do the trick.

Sam had hesitantly followed him down into the cellar but hadn't ventured more than a few feet from the splintered plank steps.

Dean spotted a sturdy chair and dragged it into the middle of the room. There was only one light bulb down here and it was hanging bare on a cord. Dean thought it was theatrically fitting. If he was going to be spending 24 hours painfully confined for the safety of others, it might as well look the part. Dean dug into the duffel bag until he found what he was looking for.

“Are you serious?” Sam frowned at the thick roll of duct tape in Dean’s hands. “You want me to attach you to a chair?”

“What I want and what I need are a few worlds apart at the moment dude.”

Sam caught the tossed tape and backed one step closer to the stairs. He turned the bulky round shape uncertainly in his hands as he gnawed on the inside of his lip. Dean knew that song and dance.

“Look, if it comes to that, I’ll do it but until then we'll just wait and see—“

“Do it now, Sam.” Dean took a seat.

“I’ll lock the door,” Sam promised. “I’ll be right here. And if I see anything—“

“Sam,” Dean lowered his voice. “I don’t feel right.”

“What?” Sam quickly dropped the waiting-it-out scheme. “What is it?”

“I can...” Dean clenched his jaw and uneasily rested his elbows on his knees. “I can feel it.”

There was a moment of silence as Sam reluctantly came closer.

Dean wasn’t exactly lying. He did feel cold, and his skin had started that achy burn to it when a good flu was on the way. But the condemned house they were squatting in didn’t even have a furnace in its gutted basement and they had woken up to a dusting of snow on their unkempt front lawn. Dean tried to think up something, anything else that would convince his brother it was time to start the tape unrolling, but no articulate imperatives were coming his way. He shifted his gaze downwards, suddenly unwilling to let Sam get a decent look at the bizarre orange tint that now filtered his vision.

The thought of it slowly spreading into the whites of his eyes turned his stomach.

“Does it hurt?” Sam asked quietly.

“Huh?”

“Your eyes,” he said. “The curse.”

“Oh yeah,” Dean assured with a nod. “Real bad.”

In all actuality, he couldn’t feel a damn thing besides tired. But if Dean knew how to do anything it was how to light a fire under Sam’s ass. Dean didn’t want to be trying to convince Sam to do the job when his cursed skin suddenly decided it was going to flip inside out.

Dean held out his wrists expectantly on the armrests.

“I-I’ll just do your hands,” Sam said.

Dean listened to the dry screech of tape and held back his small smile of triumph. However, with the battle won, the dread he was keeping stuffed underneath the victory now quickly simmered back up to the surface. He had no delusions whatsoever on the nature of things his father had hidden away in that dank storage locker. His dad wasn’t a man that worried too much about something that left a nasty sting. The man had dedicated his life to seal away the things that could not only destroy lives, but utterly dismantle them piece by piece.

He shut his eyes and forced himself to breathe like a normal person. When he opened them again his right hand was already lashed to the armrest. The sight of the professional efficiency immediately comforted him. But just as Sam leaned down to kneel at his opposite side, something abruptly jerked into focus in the corner of Dean’s eye.

“Wait,” he automatically said.

Sam stilled, warily looking around the dim cellar around them.

Dean blinked in the gloom unable to pinpoint what it was that had caught his attention. The single light bulb spread a pool of light that met every wall. He squeezed his eyes shut again. He hadn’t gotten a good look at whatever it was that flashed in his peripherals but it had sort of resembled a face.

It looked like an elongated red face that was missing its eyes.

There weren’t a whole lot of things that played his nerves but not being in control of his own mind happened to be one of them.

“What’s wrong?” It was a stupid question and Sam knew it, but it was as involuntary as Dean’s warning. “Everything okay?”

“I dunno,” Dean breathed. “I-I’m not sure.”

“I’m almost done,” Sam said. “Don’t worry.”

Breaking out in a cold sweat, the feel of Sam’s hands on his skin felt foreign and repellent. Dean shook his head back and forth, his vision sluggishly settling back to normal. He bit back a gasp as a sudden gush of pain rushed behind his eyes. The image of the strange face flickered once again, the glistening outline of the grotesque features more solid in its shape. It stuttered in the darkness behind his eyelids before he forced them open again.

“You still with me, Dean?”

“There’s something in here.” His tongue felt numb in his mouth. “Did you- did you see that?”

The room lurched sickeningly to its side before slowly righting itself.

“Y-You should leave.” Dean felt the disgusting churn of nausea begin to weigh in his gut. “Get out of here.”

“On a Monday night?” Sam forced a weak laugh as he tightened a strip across Dean’s chest. “Bars are all closed.”

Dean’s skin prickled down his spine as Sam brushed against his leg and accidentally knocked their shins together. The pain caused an urge to stand up. Startled, Dean made fists to keep from ripping his free left hand out of his brother’s grasp.

“Is that too tight?” Sam yanked the silver tape taut. “Can you feel your fingers?”

Dean always heard Sam use that even tone when a stranger was on the verge of panic.

“You gotta talk to me, man,” Sam said. “How’s it feel?”

Concentrating on the question, Dean experimentally wrenched his forearms up as hard as he was able. There wasn’t much give but he knew that with some concerted effort he’d be free in less time than any curse was going to take.

“D-Do it right.”

Sam nodded and rolled out another strip the length of his arm.

Dean gritted his teeth as his ankles and calves were pulled awkwardly to the splayed shape of the chair, a method they'd been trained to secure anyone considered high risk. He found himself staring at Sam’s hands as they worked, his fingers proficiently pulling through the sticky tape as easily as a slick piece of rope.

“Yer all set.” Sam sounded a lot more composed than he looked. “I’m gonna call Bobby, and I’m going to see if he has anything about —“

“It won’t matter.” Dean heard himself say. He ground his trapped hands into shaking fists. “All this won’t matter.”

Sam stood up and stepped backwards.

The words that were forming were strange on his tongue but it felt good to keep saying them anyway. Every syllable took a piece of the strain away pressing at the inside of his skull. Each full word felt like a relief.

“Because there’s nothing wrong with me, Sam.”

He felt like smiling so he did.

Sam stared back at him, his hands working at his sides. Dean wasn’t sure what his eyes looked like now, but however they appeared, it wasn't good. Without another word, his brother was searching his jean pockets for a telephone.

“Go ahead.” Dean nodded. “Tell Bobby I said hi.”

Dean paused, dazed and confused. He had no idea why he had just said that. He wanted to explain to Sam that he hadn’t meant it. He wanted to say what he was screaming inside his head but nothing would come out. Sam turned away when someone picked up on the other line. Dean’s throat worked as rage coursed through his body. Words spewed from his mouth before he could even think of how to form them aloud. The pounding in his head grew into a noise so loud he didn’t understand why Sam wasn’t alarmed or distracted by its roar. This entire plan had been a mistake. He’d explain it to Sam. He would make it perfectly clear how this had all been a grave misunderstanding. His brother would understand. Sam would let him go.

Sam was somewhere nearby talking. His voice was too low, murmuring with a frantic urgency that Dean only heard when they were in real trouble.

The tape encircling his limbs and chest was too tight. Dean’s vision tunneled as everything started to brighten into a blinding shade of white. He couldn’t draw in enough air. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move—

Dean realized that the long red face was back.

He struggled to look up at it where it hung, disembodied, from the basement floor. The dark bloodied stretch of it pulled into an obscene grin that dropped down towards the floor like hot wax. It wasn’t flickering or fading in the stark light of the bulb. Before he could help it, Dean let his stomach heave and the vomit splash down the front of his chest. Sam’s hand was gripping his shoulder, his voice saying that it was all going to be fine. An endless litany that assured him it would all be well.

Bobby was on his way.

He would figure it out.

Dean gaped at the shimmering countenance as its vulgar mouth impossibly stretched. Leaving its grin behind, it pulled like soft taffy into another grossly exaggerated emotion. Instead of misshapen mirth, its hollow mouth had widened to emanate a deep howl of frenzy. Dean squeezed his eyes shut, the cutting keen of its hideous shriek forcing him to hunch down in a useless gesture to defend himself. Sam heard him wheeze in pain and instantly his grip on Dean’s shoulder became harder. The wailing reached such a fevered pitch that Dean felt warm blood flow from his nose and pool hotly over his upper lip.

Sam’s voice lowered softly and was next to his ear so he wouldn’t miss a word. He was telling Dean not to be afraid. Sam was telling him that he’d be right at his side until it had all passed. Dean didn't have to look his brother in the eyes to know that he was the only one in this basement witnessing any of this. Sam was not seeing or hearing anything unusual at all.

Dean silently hoped there really was a plan.

Because if there wasn't, his brother's repertoire of plausible reassurances wasn't going to last much longer.


	2. part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean accidentally uncovers something else left over in his father's old storage space...and it sucks.

The clamor in Dean’s head died down after a while. Unfortunately, his body didn’t get the memo.

He didn’t know how long it took the violent convulsions to subside, but when his body finally stilled he numbly waited to see if it was over. Dean forced his muscles to relax after drawing in a full gasp of air and that didn’t bring about another urge to projectile vomit. As his ragged breathing returned, his brother’s crushing embrace gradually eased. Sam had been hanging onto to him as if sheer force alone would keep them both in one piece until the episode had passed.

“W-Where did it go?” Dean rasped.

The space once filled with the twisted red face was empty again. He scanned the dim cellar and he couldn’t see any trace of its form, but he knew it hadn’t disappeared completely. Its presence lingered like curls of smoke from a snuffed flame, the echo of its shrill screech making his eardrums feel as fragile as glass.

“It’s not gone.” Dean said. “B-be careful.”

Sam stared at him in stunned silence, hands unwilling to disengage from his brother’s shuddering body just yet. Dean felt trembling fingers press his pulse on his neck and a warm palm firmly wiped away a thick drizzle of spit hanging from his mouth. Unable to perform his own self-inspection, Dean touched his tongue to his upper lip and tasted the sharp salty tang of blood. As he gladly gulped in the stale basement air, he realized his brother was panting for breath too.

“What was that?” Sam straightened unsteadily to stand. “What the hell happened?”

Dean dully realized his brother was concentrating on him instead of the surrounding cellar.

“I saw … something,” he explained.

He shifted uncertainly under Sam’s distraught glare. He hadn’t just seen something; he had heard and felt things too. He recalled gruesome thoughts pushed into his mind and forced out of his mouth before he could stop them. But the language he vaguely remembered speaking throughout the roaring noise wasn’t his. As he considered it, the unwanted words formed in his head to the steady beat of his heart.

Rage.  
Loathing.  
Suspicion.  
All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter.

Flexing his sweating palms under the confines of the tape, he attempted to shake off the low humming in the back of his mind. Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore the unsettling murmur that softly repeated the same words.

“That thing started howlin’ too.” Dean added. “You miss all that racket?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Sam turned around cautiously. “Where is it? Where did it go?”

Confined in the chair, Dean didn’t bother joining the inspection of the basement. He knew it would show up again when it wanted and then vanish just as quickly. With the edge of his panic momentarily appeased, it was easier to believe this was all some bizarre product of his mind. Otherwise, whatever that cursed piece of paper had unleashed, it only seemed visible to one person and the lucky winner happened to be him.

“You can let me go, Sam.” Dean nodded. “I’m okay now.”

He didn’t exactly feel fantastic, but at least he didn’t feel like his head was about to explode anymore.

“Just-just hold on a second, would ya?”

Dean studied Sam’s troubled features for a moment before deciding not to argue. He knew well enough about the dangers of rushing to conclusions. It might take a few minutes, but Sam would figure out what Dean already knew: This thing was just all some crazy head game with a souped up sound and light show. Now he just had to convince Sam that an emergency mummification in duct tape probably wasn’t as mandatory as previously thought.

“I’ll be right back,” Sam said.

“Where are you goin’?”

“I have to go upstairs.”

Dean’s thoughts turned unbidden to the car keys sitting on the sofa with his jacket. Pictures suddenly jarred his vision, flashing in repetition like a dulled memory. He groaned and shook his head trying to clear it of the disturbing images that swarmed before his eyes.

Sam leaving out the front door.  
The car driving down the long dirt road that wound its way to the highway.  
Snow falling lazily from the gray sky and slowly burying this house.  
Trapped in this basement.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.  
Betray—

“Dean?” Sam ventured.

The vision blurred, fading back into the stark light of the bare bulb. Dean regarded his brother as Sam waited for a response at the foot of the stairs.

“I-I guess I’ll wait right here.”

The joke wasn’t very funny but the corner of Sam’s mouth pulled up into a forced half smile.

Dean watched his brother take two steps at a time, disappearing through the doorway into the upper floor. Listening to the tread of footsteps on the wooden planks above, he sagged back and shut his eyes. The dull echo of pain in his skull began to pound softly, reminding him it was still there. Beat by beat, the words lingered in his mouth as if they’d been said aloud.

Rage.  
Loathing.  
Suspicion.  
All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter.

Leaning his head against the uncomfortable backrest of the chair, Dean decided to let his mind explore all the blissful avenues of denial.

The card he found could have been a dud like Sam had suggested. All that stuff they’d packed up had been rotting in that musty storage unit for years. There was every chance that time and neglect had worn its mojo down to nearly nothing. In fact, all the stupid card might do was fuck up a guy’s vision and hand over one bitch of a headache. Even better, the letters painted on the paper might have been for a specific person, someone who never had the pleasure of triggering it.

However, Dean knew he’d have to work a little harder to convince himself of those possibilities.

It was common knowledge just how much harm one of those little tripwires – stupid handwritten curses - could do. From striking a man blind to casting a pox, the effect was never any good. If the bastard who crafted it was particularly talented, the cards became more than a tool to strike grievous harm. The painted symbols could worm their way through every nuance of the nervous system and control a man like a meat puppet.

He looked down apprehensively at his shaking hands and puke splattered lap.

An hour ago, he was ordering his brother to tie him up and now all he wanted was to get the hell out of this chair. He briefly thrashed in the seat, twisting his arms and legs as far as they could before the tape began to hurt bad enough to make him stop. The pounding of his brother’s boots along creaky planks brought his attention back to the stairs.

Sam’s grim face did little to bolster his hope for liberation.

Dean wasn’t sure what Sam had done upstairs but he dismally knew what he’d be doing if their roles were reversed. He’d make sure he knew the type and location of every type of weapon available. If it were a factory made pistol meant to injure or a butter knife accidentally formed to do the same, he’d make sure it got gone.

Sam dropped a duffel bag on the steps and started searching the cellar floor.

“I really jumped the gun on this one huh?” Dean halfheartedly tugged at his arms. “Talk about overkill.”

Discarded slats of wood piled in the corner distracted his brother. He was picking up chopped 2x4s and jamming them tight into place under the narrow cellar windows to avert any exit.

“An ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure.” Dean recited.

Sam had taken a length of particle board and was making it into smaller pieces by breaking them over a knee.

“Jesus,” Dean muttered to himself. “I hated it when dad said that crap like that.”

Watching Sam setting up blockades made the ache grinding in his head grow heavier. All of the preventive measures being made were completely pointless. His brother seemed to be listening to every lucid word he was saying but he wasn’t responding in any way. If the stubborn son of a bitch wasn’t going to listen to logical reason, than he might obey a direct order. It didn’t work often but Dean decided to toss caution to the wind and try to pull rank.

“Time to let me go, Sam.”

Sam finally looked up from the shattered pieces of wood and dragged a hand across his sweaty forehead. As cold as it was, his brother’s face was damp with exertion. He hadn’t stopped moving since the trip upstairs and he hadn’t said much either.

“In a while, maybe,” he replied.

Dean wasn’t sure how much time had passed because his watch was buried under about five layers of tape, but Sam’s watch was working just fine. From what he could see of it, the hour hand was hovering around dawn. Not that anyone could tell down in the submerged cellar. It could have been any time of day with the bare bulb glowing bleakly at its center and the temperature staying at a few degrees above freezing.

He stilled when his vision started to flicker and jump again.

Snow falling lazily from the gray sky and slowly burying this house.  
Trapped in this basement.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.

The sharp agony in his head twisted to a fine point, the scattered voices of his own thoughts crowding into a jumble of noise. The uproar swiftly grew into a din so loud his wrists strained under the binds in an involuntary effort to cover his face. Dean looked anxiously at his brother’s turned back but Sam hadn’t noticed anything. The still cellar air began to stir against his skin in an unnatural breeze. A sudden gush of wind grew colder then turned so blistering hot that he had to close his eyes. Dean knew when he opened them again that he would see it.

The frenzied face hung inches from his own; a scream frozen in shape on its red bloated lips.

Rage.  
Rage.  
Rage.

He cringed backwards when it began to violently contort, bleeding its pigment into the air and unfurling in every direction. Dean could feel the sticky strands of its reach slipping underneath his clothing and sluggishly coating him. Unable to move or speak, he viciously struggled in the restraints as it spread hungrily over his skin. As it slicked sickeningly down his chest and between his legs, his stomach lurched again.

Just when he didn’t think he could stand its touch for a moment longer, it dissipated into the air like a mist.

Coughing violently, Dean didn’t realize his brother had returned to his side until he was finished throwing up a second time. He tried to turn his face away as Sam used an old towel to clean up what he could. From the absent worry on Sam’s face, Dean knew he’d once again seen nothing. All his brother witnessed was a lunatic fighting himself in a chair.

“S-Stop,” he sputtered as Sam scrubbed the cloth over his face. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” Sam muttered back. “You’re perfect.”

Sam found the cleanest part of the oil rag to wipe across Dean’s mouth and chin. He didn’t comment on the weird puke that should have been beer and remains of dinner the night before. Whatever it was that Dean had thrown up was blood red. Not bright like from a fresh wound, or brown like an old one, but glaring uniform tint that held no organic scent. It was like paint or some kind of dye. Dean knew what this red stuff was.

“It’s that thing.” He attempted to explain. “I-It’s in me.”

Dean squeezed his eyes shut as the eager whispering hissed in his ears.

Sam leaving out the front door.  
All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter.

“Please, Dean?” Sam said softly. “You gotta tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s-It’s talking to me.” Dean growled, wanting to drag his hands up over his face and unable. “It’s saying things.”

“So?” Sam urged. “What’s it saying?”

Dean’s gaze hardened at the sight of the tape meticulously looped over his arms and legs. The mocking voice in his head answered in slurring syllables that ran into one another in one long string of garbled nonsense.

betrayalbetrayalbetrayalbetrayalbetrayal

There was no need to keep him tied up like this. He was in complete control of himself and everything around him. Sam was choosing to leave him this way just to spite him. How could he not be trusted by his own brother?

betrayalbetrayalbetrayalbetrayalbetrayal

Dean listened to the distorted word that never seemed to end.

“Okay, fine.” Sam impatiently conceded when no answer was forthcoming. “Tell me what it looks like.”

Dean felt his mouth contort into a deep frown.

“It’s a face.”

“A face.” Sam flung the rag down in exasperation. “What else?”

“It’s over there now.”

“Where?” Sam looked warily around. “Here?”

“It’s not a spook.” Dean felt the stab in his head throb against the backs of his eyes. “It-It’s not anything.”

Dean knew he wasn’t making any sense, but he couldn’t find his way around the fog in his head. His words, his sentences, were all on the tip of his tongue. But he couldn’t hold on to it long enough to say what he wanted to say. The thought of trying to explain all of that to Sam just intensified his headache. Screw it, he’d just forget trying to tell Sam what he was feeling, maybe he could just point his brother in right direction.

He searched the recesses of the cellar where the light didn’t quite reach.

“Over there.” Dean told him. “It’s in the corner.”

Sam turned and studied the shadows.

Dean watched the nebulous shape settle in the farthest of the gloom and begin to grow. It seeped towards the exposed broad beams while it dripped down into a thick puddle on the floor. After a few minutes, it had molded to the exact silhouette of the dark it had chosen. He was transfixed by its moving surface and as it undulated in place. The hunter’s eye that always strayed through his thoughts dazedly wondered if the creature was trying to hide. The notion was useless, considering Dean was looking right at it and Sam had no clue that it was even there in the first place.

“It’s right there.” He would have pointed but he couldn’t lift his hand. “Can’t you see it?”

“What’s it doing?” Sam asked carefully.

Dean didn’t miss the edge of skepticism in his brother’s voice.

“I don’t know.” He answered quietly.

Its rolling and fleshy surface mesmerized him. The dark sheen to its substance rippled like a sea creature drifting in a current. In his fixed observation, he realized it had formed the hollow eye sockets again. As he watched, he understood it was doing something after all. Observing him with unblinking eyes, it smiled with the psychotic blankness of a mask. It whispered to him softly, lulling him with its calm.

All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter.

Oblivious to its presence, Sam walked right next to it, making Dean’s heart lurch in his throat when its form expanded in aggression. Dean tensed in his chair when the thing graciously widened its mouth to allow Sam to pass the EMF meter carefully from ceiling to ground within the cavernous dimensions of its jaw. There were a few other tricks, outside of electronics, that sometimes revealed when something was concealed in plain sight. Dean watched Sam perform the basics: the murmur of prayers, the signs, and the symbols that would make a creature like this one flinch back as if exposed to an open flame.

But nothing happened.

“There’s nobody here, Dean.”

The dismissive tone in Sam’s voice made him start to feel ill again.

“There is something there.” He murmured through gritted teeth. “I’m looking right the hell at it.”

Dean’s fixated attention was suddenly drawn down by movement on the floor.

Another cold sweat broke out over his skin as a shimmering shape appeared on the ground at Sam’s feet. The shape darkened into a large circle, spreading and spinning into a greater size. Flat at first, its mass stretched upwards, slowly exploding red towards the ceiling with broad fleshy petals. Dean’s eyes shifted rapidly between his unaware brother and the laughing face forming within the gathering form.

“What?” Sam asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s trying to make me go nuts,” Dean snarled. “It’s trying to make me lose it.”

“M-Maybe, you’re…” Sam broke eye contact and shoved the meter in his jacket pocket. “Bobby said you might be seeing things. Maybe hearing things too.”

“Are you saying this shit is all in my head?” Dean asked. “Because for a bunch of make believe, it’s kinda kicking my ass—“

“I didn’t say that.”

Dean blinked in confusion as the looming shape over his brother suddenly vanished into thin air. His mind frantically groped back to what Sam had said about Bobby. The trip upstairs had included more than just some weapon checks. It sounded like Sam had made another phone call.

“Bobby, huh?” His fingernails dug into his palms. “He say anything else?”

When his brother didn’t immediately begin elaborating on the most important phone call in all of history, Dean felt his heart start to pound in his chest. The feel of the tape itched through his clothes. The need to stand and stretch his cramped limbs flooded his head until he thought he might start screaming. Hazy images of drifting snowflakes and a quieted iced pond came back along with the thudding pain in his temples.

Snow falling lazily from the gray sky and slowly burying this house.  
Trapped in this basement.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.  
Betrayal.

“Pretend its Christmas, Sam.” Dean offered derisively. “Get a knife and start unwrapping—“

“Bobby’ll be here soon.” Sam promised, hands lacing and twisting as he paced the concrete floor. “Real soon.”

“He’s a state away.” The whine creeping up in his voice made him tighten his fists. “I’m not gonna sit around here all day--”

“Bobby said everything would be… would be fine.”

He watched, furious, as his brother walked over to the duffel bag and pushed things around. The quiet assembly and inspection of their tools made Dean sit up straighter in his seat. Sam’s stoic examination of the inventory without the merest discussion on how they should proceed made what was left of Dean’s nerves spark like livewires. Sam was considering a sloshing container filled with water. The only water they kept in those fancy plastic bottles was the holy kind.

“Now what?” Dean asked. “What’s that for—“

“Drink it.” Sam interrupted.

For a split second Dean wondered why he wasn’t just getting a splash of the stuff right in the face. But as Sam drew closer he knew exactly why that procedure wasn’t being made. His brother was offering the bottle because the kind of proof he required necessitated a little more than skin contact.

“No thanks.” He tried to grin but failed. “You know we always save the good shit for company.”

“There’s plenty more.” Sam mumbled. “But it might not do much to … to whatever you are.”

Dean felt his anger immediately weaken, a chill of fear washing down his back like ice water.

“I-I’m not anything.” He stuttered up at him. “I’m me.”

“Maybe.” Sam responded curtly.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That card you looked at?” Sam slumped down on the lowest step of the stairs and squeezed the bottle. “It’s not a curse like we thought. Bobby said it’s different.”

He watched his brother shift uncomfortably to face the cellar wall. He wasn’t sure how many times it had happened already, but he abruptly realized Sam had been avoiding looking directly into his eyes every time they spoke. For the first time he wondered if the odd orange tint to his pupils had changed to something else.

“S-So what is it?” Dean asked cautiously. “What’s the card do?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Dean listened in disbelief as the comprehension of the words sunk in.

“I’m not possessed.” He breathed up at him. “Th-There’s nothing wrong with me!”

Dean tried desperately to blink back the fury.

Besides seeing weird faces and shouting belligerent crap like a whack job, there was nothing wrong with him. While he was making a list, he probably should add the slasher-flick red puke he seemed to have an in endless supply. The small detail of his eyes changing to the color of hell fire was sure sign of normalcy too—

His breath caught in his throat as his headache quadrupled.

Rage.  
Loathing.  
Suspicion.  
All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter

As soon as he started to gather logical thoughts, the pain behind his eyes came crashing back to dash them to pieces. Dean fought the scrambled whisper of voices that tried to soothe away his agitation. Forcing the ramble of the blathering insistence back, he clenched his jaw and tried to cling onto his coherency.

He heard Sam’s determined sigh as he slowly got to his feet.

Dean stared at the innocuous bottle of water.

He didn’t want to drink it because he wasn’t actually sure what was going to happen. It might sear his esophagus like battery acid, or ease his dry throat. The stuff might boil his stomach lining or it might do nothing at all.

Dean jerked his face away when Sam pressed the nozzle to his lips.

“Don’t.” Sam said miserably. “Don’t make me do it.”

For a second Dean had no idea why his brother was looking at him so remorsefully. But then he took a look back at the waiting bottle of water and felt his throat constrict. If he thought he was getting the royal treatment now, any interesting effect he set off under the influence of holy water and this state of affairs was going to get a whole lot worse.

Dean did what he always did when he knew he was in big trouble; he thought real fast.

“There-there’s no one living around here,” he quickly stammered. “I’ll take off. No one will see me and whenever this wears off, I’ll come back. You know what it’ll be? It’ll be just fine—“

Sam was as gentle as he could be with someone completely unwilling to comply. Dean growled in frustration as the plastic slid into his mouth, the pour of water coming faster than he could possibly drink it. He tried to whip his head from side to side but Sam kept him firmly in place, keeping the flow going even when most of it was running down the sides of Dean’s face. When it finally stopped, Dean gasped and choked as he wheezed in air.

His mouth still half full, Dean tried to spit out what he could into Sam’s face.

The freezing room grew colder with his soaked shirt and the sting of frosty air on his wet face. Sam was watching him carefully, all the signs the deluge of blessed water would swiftly reveal failing to appear. His brother’s eyes brightened in a mixture of relief and regret. His hands gripped Dean over the tape, his silent apology crushing Dean’s forearms.

Sam slowly dragged a sleeve over his eyes.

“I told you…” Dean heard his voice crack. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

His heart thudded in his ears; he wanted to tear his limbs free from their encasement and bash the heavy chair against the wall until it was nothing but tinder. The noise that whispered in the background of his mind rose back up and urged him to do what he wanted. Each foggy thought jolted into crystal clarity. He seethed with the knowledge of everything he would do once his hands were free. What he’d do with the blade Sam was keeping by the stairs. What he could do to prolong the process of measured and hideous retaliation.

Dean leaving out the front door.  
The car driving down the long dirt road that wound its way to the highway.  
Snow falling lazily from the gray sky and slowly burying this house.  
Blood in this basement.  
Death.  
Death.  
Death.

He liked it when Sam flinched at the sight of his sudden grin.

“You got it all backwards.” Dean told him. “We both know that if there’s anything wrong around here, it’s with you.”

Sam’s distressed gaze shifted into something else.

To his horror, Dean quickly realized what had come out of his mouth. He yelled over the urge to keep talking, fighting back the insane words that wanted to come rushing out along with it. He bit down on his lip until he tasted blood, ripping the thread of his thoughts out of the downward spiral of the madness. He had to get out of here and get far away from his brother. He had to make Sam listen and understand.

He didn’t have to summon any fake rage to fully illustrate his mood either.

“You listen to me.”

Sam’s wavering stance faltered further at the livid edge of his voice.

“There’s a couple hundred square miles of forest out there.” Dean told him. “I can make myself so scarce that even you wouldn’t be able to find me. I’ll walk into those woods and I won’t stop until I’m good and lost—“

“No.”

Sam’s eyes had narrowed dangerously. Dean wasn’t very often on the receiving end of that look and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. However, at the moment he didn’t really care.

“Are you listening to me!” Dean shouted. “You have to—ah!”

A fist clamped down on the flesh between Dean’s throat and shoulder. The fixed squeeze distracted him from his line of reasoning, but the hand that forced up his chin caused him to lose all train of rational thought all together. He figured out why Sam was avoiding looking him directly in the eyes; because whatever was there now was filling Sam with rancid loathing. His cheeks flushed with hatred at the sight and he swallowed, disgusted, for addressing it at all.

Sam’s voice was calm and steady.

“You’re not taking my brother anywhere.”

Dean blinked up at him in shock.

Sam’s wasn’t speaking to him. His brother was talking to whatever was nestled behind his new set of ugly eyes.

“S-Sammy?”

“You’ll either be gone in 24 hours, or I’ll find a way to kill you before then.”

Dean whimpered as his thoughts surged and collided inside his skull. He could no longer separate what he was thinking for himself and what was slithering through the cracks and igniting his rage.

Sam turned at a faint sound from the outside of the house. Dean looked up breathlessly at the familiar grind of tires rolling over the gravel driveway.

It looked like Bobby’s old truck had broken a few land records and arrived early.

“Oh man.” Sam exhaled in relief. “Thank god.”

Dean started to feel a glimmer of the same hope, but it was quickly obliterated by the agony gushing in a howling path inside his brain. Looking up in confusion at the light hanging brightly overhead, Dean watched everything grow dark. The cellar descended into a garish red glow as if the glass bulb had been splattered in blood. He could feel the tape over his wrists loosen and the wrap around his ankles and legs go slack. The burning sting of the invisible blade left his clothing cut to his slashed skin.

Raising his trembling hands, he slowly understood he was free.

Rage.  
Rage.  
Rage.

He watched Sam stop in his eager turn towards the stairs. The exhausted smile of relief faded as he saw Dean standing unfettered behind him. Sam stumbled on the bottom step as he backed up into it.

“D-Dean?”

Dean saw the red light gather into a shape above their heads. He knew well enough by now that his brother couldn’t see any of it. He knew without a doubt that Sam certainly couldn’t hear the impatient voices that buzzed and sizzled through the air like insects.

All this won’t matter.  
It won’t matter.  
Because there’s nothing wrong with you, Dean.

The monstrous face that congealed across the ceiling smiled down on him and Dean found himself smiling back up.

He knew exactly what he had to do next.

 

tbc


	3. part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look behind you. It's all Sammys POV now.

Sam blinked, his eyes opening to a hoarse shout still echoing from his mouth.

Sprawled across something uncomfortable, he realized that he was no longer standing on the stairs. From the bite of sharp corners of wood digging into his back, it felt like he was now laying on them instead. Unable to focus his eyes, he could do nothing but reassemble his rattled senses as quickly as he could. Easing his hands down his sides, he felt the gritty cellar steps underneath his body and tried to push himself up. Pain stopped him short and he fell back with a gasp. Groggily pulling at his aching shoulder, he struggled to remember his last clear thought before everything had gone blank.

Despite all the elaborate precautions, the monster had gotten free.

Sam had almost stopped it from getting past him up the stairs. They had been in deadlock half way up the steps when his brother had heaved Sam with a might that wasn’t his. Sam let his hands travel down his chest and abdomen to check for injury. The smell of the dank basement was as strong as the scent of blood. As his confusion wore off the anxiety quickly crept back in as the seconds ticked by. There was no telling how long he had been left laying there and that thing lurking inside Dean could be standing around just waiting for him to regain consciousness. The hush surrounding him told him that he was alone, but he knew better than to trust silence.

The rickety timber staircase beneath him suddenly jolted with the vibrating impact of footsteps.

When he attempted to sit up, excruciating pain spread up the side of his throat and jerked him backwards. He groped where neck and shoulder met, but stilled when a callused hand stopped his. Disoriented and unarmed, panic seized him and sent his body into motion before he could think. Aiming for the silhouette that blotted out the light, Sam swung out a fist as hard as he could.

Instead of flesh, his punch met nothing. The same sturdy hand caught his fist on its upswing and shoved it down to his side.

“Give yourself a second,” a voice told him. “You knocked your head pretty good.”

As firm fingers explored his wounded shoulder, Sam tried to concentrate his blurred vision on the person crouching over him. He finally sensed their relaxed posture was of no threat, the smell of the crisp winter and faint scent of wood smoke putting him at ease. Before comprehension dawned and reality sunk in, Sam was sure for just one moment that his father had somehow appeared.

“It’s all right now,” Bobby murmured.

His eyesight cleared enough to reveal what was prohibiting his shoulder from moving. The bowie knife he normally kept for protection pinned him to the wall. Sam watched the glittering blade as Bobby slowly worked it loose from the plaster, half a foot of the saw-edged metal hissing through the fissure inches from his face. He sagged down to the floor when its point slid free of his jacket and released him from the wall. Pulling at the blood soaked tear, he numbly understood that it had stabbed through his clothing but only grazed the skin of his shoulder. For a minor laceration, it hurt like hell. However, he didn’t understand why the tempered steel hadn’t been plunged through the breastbone and straight through his heart.

“I-I’m alive.” Sam stammered, his breath fogging as if they were in a meat locker and not indoors. “I’m n-not dead.”

“If it makes you feel any better?” Bobby studied the length of the blade. “I’m a bit shocked myself.”

The older hunter looked just like every other time Sam had seen him. An old corduroy coat sat over the flannels, but the threadbare jeans and ragged baseball cap were all in place. Sam tried to sit up the rest of the way and hissed at the burning ache at the back of his head.

“Why didn’t it kill me?” He felt blood sticking his shirt to his chest. “It got loose, it got out.”

“Did you get a look at it?” Bobby stuck the knife into the floor.

“Wh-what?” Sam let Bobby pull him forward by the elbow, the room tilting back and forth before his eyes. “No? I couldn’t see it. He kept saying there was something in here but I—“

“No, no.” The old man shook his head impatiently. “The jinx Dean found on the piece of paper?”

Sam swallowed and quickly shook his head.

“I couldn’t carry you around when you was a kid.” Bobby told him when dizziness pushed Sam over into the older man. “Sure as heck can’t get you up the stairs now.”

Sam braced himself against the railing and waited until his equilibrium settled back into place. The sight of the lone, empty chair in the middle of the cellar brought his panic back, quick and cold, to the pit of his stomach. The duct tape he had spent so long wrapping painstakingly around his brother’s arms and legs sat gaping open like a shrugged cocoon against the chair. Neatly sliced – it looked as if someone had taken a razor blade to it.

“Bobby, Dean is—he’s not—it might take him into the woods—“

“Don’t worry about that right now. He’s not going anyplace,” Bobby took a doubtful look at his watch. “At least not for a good while.”

The clipped responses were what Sam had grown up listening to. At one time, when he was younger, it was second nature to demand details only when they were absolutely required, if ever. He nodded hesitantly at the older man, realizing Bobby had something up his sleeve.

Sam looked up the steep stairs.

Knowing that the location of anyone on its three floors was easily detectable by the whine of the old boards, he listened for any sign of Dean. The man next to him noticed his apprehension even if none of it was shared out loud.

“Told you to not to worry,” Bobby repeated. “He’s gonna stay put right where I left him.”

Sam tore his gaze from the silent upper floor and tried to keep the uncertainty off his face.

“What’d you do?”

“Set up a few snares outside.”

Knowing there was no conventional snare on the planet that could keep a man like his brother down, Sam wondered what that meant.

The house was quiet, except for a soft tapping and the sound of the wind. Pausing at the open front door, Sam touched it, stopping the brass knob from knocking against the wall. The door hung from the frame, a doorknob-shaped hole in the plaster behind it. He looked out across the small porch towards the edge of the woods and the dirt road that meandered through it. Aside from Bobby’s truck, there was nothing else visible in the muted dawn but the sag of the peeling fence.

Snow had begun to drift down from the gray wash of clouds. White flakes had started to collect on the ground, layering on the windshield of the pickup and the frozen muddy path that led through the withered yard. The rusty gate had been left unlatched, and was swinging in the breeze with a whining hinge.

“What did it do to him, Bobby?” Sam asked. “What is it?”

“Just show me where that card is.”

Sam led them to the back room on the first floor where Dean had been sorting through their father’s belongings from storage. Placed evenly out on the floor, the items were strangely arranged in equal distances from one another. It vaguely reminded Sam of how his brother treated the precious individual parts of an engine during repair. Bobby stood a few feet from the only pieces of furniture in the room and took a deep breath. The folding table and the chair next to it were still piled with a clutter of yellowed papers, but the ripped envelope and card were lying right where Sam had left them.

“I’m guessin’ Dean didn’t get around explaining what he saw on the thing?” Bobby had pulled a manila binder from the heap and was using them like tongs to flip the envelope over. “What sort of symbols and such?”

With some embarrassment, Sam realized he had never even thought to ask his brother those all-important details. All he had known was that the paper was cursed; all the rest seemed like insignificant minutiae until now. Bobby examined the sachet dangling from the length of the folder.

“Get me some fire,” Bobby decided. “And something to keep it in.”

Sam looked around and spotted a tithing bowl his father had collected for some purpose or another. Bobby saw his logical choice, which killed two birds with one convenient and blessed stone. A container that sat on an altar to collect donations in the name of Our Lord and Savior would be just the trick. The older man was shaking his head again.

“What’d say we try this procedure out with something your daddy didn’t hide for a good reason?”

Quickly changing his mind, Sam discarded the idea of the convenient bowl and headed for the dingy kitchen. Without a flashlight, he used his hands to search the cabinet’s contents in the dark. A mechanical calm took over his mind, fixing on what bag out in the car had a canister of lighter fluid and all the weatherproof matches. All he had to do for the moment was start a fire.

“Meet me outside.” Bobby called out behind him. “I don’t wanna leave Dean alone for too long.”

Sam heard the urgency in the hunter’s voice and hastened his pace through the empty house.

 

 

 

 

 

The gentle winter storm brought the clouds down low in the sky.

Sam grimaced at the cold mud seeping into his boots as he followed Bobby with the only thing in the place he could find that wouldn’t burn. Setting the aluminum trashcan on the ground, he unlocked the car’s trunk for everything else they'd require. He noted with relief that the thin blanket of snow was untouched on the black paint of the roof and doors. No attempt had been made to gain access to the arensenal locked inside. A brief look around showed him no sign of footsteps had ventured within its vicinity within the last hour. The relief shifted back into uneasiness, the fact that his brother hadn’t attempted to arm himself as troubling as it was reassuring.

Shoving all his thoughts aside, Sam slung the bag of supplies over his good shoulder and got moving.

“I made a few stops before I drove all the way in here.” Bobby nodded to the thick tangle of the forest. “Set up some traps. Knew if he crossed any of them it’d wrap him up good.”

Taking the lead, Sam started walking eagerly in the direction indicated.

“You saw him?” He asked. “Was he okay?”

Bobby was close behind, swearing softly when the snap of branches whipped back into his face.

“He got through a couple, but one of ‘em worked just fine.” He said. “Over there, back behind that old shed.”

Noting that Bobby had completely ignored his question, Sam hurried as fast as he could without tripping through the underbrush. He could now plainly see the path Dean had made through the broken foliage and brittle weeds.

“It’d be better to do this in the house.” Bobby sighed. “But we can’t move him. Not now.”

“You didn’t have much time for snares.” Sam tried not to slip over the slick surface of a moss covered log. “How’d you know he’d come this way?”

“Didn’t figure he’d head for the road,” Bobby answered. “There’s a river all swelled up from the thaw just south of here. I know that if I didn’t want to run into nobody I’d head into some woods. Checked the map and this stretch don’t end for miles.”

Sam readjusted his grip on the bag and gnawed on the inside of his mouth. That was exactly what that thing inside of Dean said it would do. It would take off for the darkest parts of nowhere and disappear. The idea that the creature had almost succeeded in making good on its threat made his agitation grow.

A strange noise made him pause.

He strained to listen to the faint sound of something thrashing in the dry leaves of the forest floor. Ignoring the cuts of nettles and vine, he pushed his way through the thicket until he stumbled out into a small clearing. At first, he thought the day had gotten slightly brighter but the dull gloom of the clouds had dimmed with the storm. The black lace of the bare branches overhead was softly lit by something else. For a moment the forest was filled with crimson vapor, dripping off the trees and pooling within the hollows of the ground. Sam blinked and it was gone, the snow rushing in where he’d only seen a murky haze seconds before.

“Dean?”

His brother swung to look in his direction, anger seeping from him visibly like steam. Clothes coated in dead leaves and clumped soil, each side of his face had matching scratches from his passage through the dense undergrowth. Dean’s retinas had only been tinged when Sam had seen him last, but now everything including the whites of his eyes were solid red. The only way he could tell Dean was looking at him was because of the tilt of his head.

Sam waited for words, swearing and worse, but his brother said nothing.

Dean’s struggles suddenly renewed, a pained whine coming from the back of his throat like a wounded animal. His body was bound in what looked like thin strands of rope glowing as white as the sky above. Several had looped around Dean’s wrists while countless others had coiled around his legs and arms. It appeared as if he had walked right into a spider web and tumbled forward onto his knees. Their tight stretch didn’t quite let him reach the ground, his hands were in front of him to catch the fall that never came. Sam saw the wards hastily marked on all the surrounding trees. Broad slashes with a piece of coal or burnt tinder were almost completely hidden by the wet black trunks.

Bobby’s trap had worked just like he'd promised.

The length of the stuff coiled around Dean’s throat was just tight enough to make talking difficult. If it wasn’t constricting around his neck already, he was strangling himself trying to break free. He moaned and wheezed for air, pulling and twisting his body any way he could.

Sam was sliding to his knees beside him before he knew what he was doing. Trying to push his fingers between the tight coils of fiber, he couldn’t find any slack in its constraints.

“Bobby!” Sam gasped. “He-he can’t breathe!”

“About as fun as a choke chain.” Bobby shrugged. “But it does the job.”

After his initial shock subsided, Sam's shaking hands told him that his brother’s chest was rising and falling. When Dean was at rest, his breathing wasn’t impaired at all. There was an intense heat radiating with the damp smell of churned earth under the trap, making the snowflakes settle on Dean’s face and stream off his skin like sweat. Holding onto Dean’s heaving body Sam checked his face as carefully as he could. With no discernable pupils, his brother seemed blind, his face stricken with the same panic Sam had observed all night long. Dean writhed in his grip, all his muscles tensed in the web of thin string biting sharply into his flesh.

“Dean?” Sam held his chin so he couldn’t look away. “Can you hear me?”

The frantic whimpering growl that came out of his brother made him grit his teeth. The acrid scent of lighter fluid and the bright orange flicker of flames redirected his attention.

“Over here, Sam,” Bobby said. “We can take a look at it now.”

Sam got to his feet and moved towards the fire in the garbage can.

The flames didn’t burn it up like it would any other piece of paper. Edges curled back and the sachet crumbled into flimsy black ash immediately. However, the vellum underneath didn’t combust like nature warranted it should.

“I’ll be,” Bobby muttered.

Even knowing it was now safe, Sam still had to force his gaze away from the sputtering remains of the envelope and to the card itself. Its rectangular shape hadn’t darkened with the flames, but instead turned translucent. An opaque film dissipated as the fire began to die out. The disarmed symbols on it were plain to see but Sam had no idea of what they might be.

“You’ve seen one of these before?”

“Few times.” With a knife point, he pushed the soggy vellum around in the lighter fluid to keep the burn going. “It’s not a possession.”

Sam looked uneasily at his brother.

“That’s good.”

“Wish it was.”

“What?”

“You can exorcise a demon.” Bobby dusted off his hands. “You can’t do anything with this but let it run its course. These cards were created to ruin someone’s day. Like that lucky charm you found, some were made bad enough to see you dead at the end of it.”

“If he isn’t possessed then what is he?”

“Crazy.” Bobby said bluntly. “This curse prefers suicide but it’ll take any murders Dean commits on the way down.”

“That’s it?” Sam blinked. “That’s all it does?”

Bobby barked out a laugh. “Not good enough for ya?”

“I thought- I thought he was—“

“Don’t you worry. There’s some son of a bitch runnin’ the show. Bet Dean can see and hear the bastard clear as you or me.”

Sam looked down at the smoldering remains of the card. It had finally blackened. The symbols that had been drawn across its surface had faded away and now resembled something that reminded him of a mask. There was a slight suggestion of wide set round eyes, a smear of a mouth with the ends turned up in a cheerless smile.

“Dean said he saw a face.”

“What else?”

Sam rubbed his eyes trying to remember the blur of his brother’s shouting and confusion. It had been hard to listen to everything he had said because most of it hadn't made any sense. After a while all Sam could think about was the raw red gleam of his eyes and the horrible misery in his voice.

“He said something was talking to him,” Sam said. “Said something was inside of him.”

Bobby considered Dean panting down into the thick carpet of rust colored pine needles. Although he was still pushing his boots into the dirt behind him and wrenching his wrists, he appeared more subdued.

Sam felt the sick dread he’d been fighting to keep down surfacing again. “How do we know that’s still him?”

“We don’t.” Bobby nudged the smoking garbage can with a knee. “But there’s one sure sign that he’s not completely gone.”

“What’s that?”

“Coulda killed you.” Bobby glanced at Sam’s wounded shoulder. “And he didn’t.”

The shimmer of ropes stretched taut between the trees seemed duller, the texture and shade of something physical rather than the gauzy light that bore them from thin air. Sam remembered the hunter’s warning about the extraordinary trap lasting for only a certain measure of time. The minute hand on his watch seemed stuck in place, the remains of the curse spanned out over an eternity of hours. With a sigh, Sam tipped his head back in the fluttering swirl of snow.

“This day is going to take a while.”

“Let’s start a real fire,” Bobby told him. “I’m freezin’.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bobby made a few trips back to the house for some dry kindling. After that, the man had settled down on a spot between the roots of a tree and shut his eyes. Sam pulled his hood up against the wet fall of snow and tried to do the same but he couldn’t go to sleep - no matter how worn out he was. The frosty air made his banged-up head pound and his shoulder throb. But regardless of the distracting aches and pains, there was no way he could drift off and ignore the sounds of his brother’s distress only a few feet away. Although Dean’s frantic mumbling waned, his fear set Sam on an identical edge.

He anxiously watched as the struggles became weaker and Dean’s body became heavier within the mass of strands. When Dean’s forehead finally rested against the ground, he even allowed himself to relax slightly in turn. At first, Sam hoped his brother’s calm had set in because of exhaustion, but then he heard something else.

It was the hoarse whisper of muffled crying.

Sam had gotten up and tried pacing.

Dean’s weird silence had done nothing but grate on his raw nerves and now all he wished was it had never been broken. Falling to a kneel between the tangle of ropes, Sam got as close as he could to mumble all the canned words he’d learned were meant to soothe. But any babble of false comfort was useless against whatever insidious litany was running in a loop inside his brother’s head. Although the crackling fire was blistering hot behind them, Dean tensed again as his body lapsed into a violent fit of shivering. Sam began rubbing the trembling bare hands, but they weren’t stiff with cold. All the pale exposed skin he could find was searing with heat. He was uncomfortably reminded of an overheated furnace when the smolder of red eyes flashed in his direction. Dean’s missing pupils momentarily sharpened into pinpoints with the glow of molten metal.

Sam looked at the duffel bag he had set by the fire.

Bobby hadn’t mentioned what they were going to do once this trap evaporated back to where it had come from. Whatever was urging Dean towards ending his life could break through a lot of things but he’d be interested to see if it could eat through stainless steel. If the other restraints he had on hand didn’t work, he’d keep him here himself if he had too. He squeezed his eyes shut with the knowledge of how well he’d accomplished that task the last time. This round he had a feeling he wouldn’t be as lucky with the outcome.

Hoping his touch would do better than his voice, he felt at the cords that were bunched around Dean’s limbs and neck.

“It h-hurts.”

His brother’s words startled him, the language coming out crystal clear when it had been nothing but garbled nonsense before.

“I can—I can’t—” Dean’s strained voice was almost gone. “I-It hurts bad.”

Sam remembered his brother saying the same the night before. He’d been lying then, trying to get Sam to move when he didn’t want to. He wondered what Dean meant now, the thin twine that cinched into his skin, or the rancid lull of persuasion that was boiling over inside his skull.

“Y-You gotta let me go.” Dean said.

Sam stared down at his brother’s lost expression.

The desperate appeal sounded genuine because Bobby was absolutely right. What was trapped in the makeshift campsite wasn’t a demon hiding in the guise of flesh, it was his brother. Dean’s frustration peaked again, his fatigued body shuddering in the effort to get free. The fire lit his brother’s face and reflected off his toneless blood-red eyes. The snow had started falling harder, vanishing over the flames as it licked into the air.

Sam shut his eyes again.

“Bobby’s crazy.” Dean breathed through a sob. “Not me. You let me go. I have to get out of here.”

“I can’t, Dean.”

“Please…”

Kneeling down with his face in the rot of leaves, Sam screamed inside his head as hard as he could so he wouldn’t do it out loud. He flung a few crushed handfuls of pine needles aside and got up again. From the slack fall of Bobby’s mouth, he could tell the man was actually getting some sleep under the pull of his cap.

“Don’t leave me here.” Dean whispered down to the ground.

Sam breathed. In and out – dragging air into his lungs. Watching his breath fog in long steady exhales, he shifted in place and worked his hand over the handle of the sheathed knife tucked in the belt of his jeans. Bobby wouldn’t have closed his eyes if the snare didn’t have some decent time left on it. With a brisk pace the dirt road that emptied out to the highway was only a short hike away.

He could take a few minutes to stretch his legs.

“Oh god, don’t fucking leave me here...”

Maybe he could go back to the house and warm up a little by that electrical heater. Sort through some of the crap they’d dragged out of storage. Take the axe out back and start chopping up the soggy firewood until his palms bled.

Think.

Breathe.

The temperature plunged when he stepped outside the circle of the fire’s light and into the dim hush of the surrounding forest. He heard Bobby stir behind him, the soft question on his lips slurred with disrupted slumber. When Sam started moving through the white dusted trees his brother’s words disintegrated again.

Stumbling through the fall of snow and branches, he began walking faster when he heard his brother call out.

He broke into a run when Dean started to scream his name.


	4. part 4

The wooden handle burned Sam’s hands, the worn grooves grinding into already-broken blisters.

Agony was a nice diversion.

It allowed him to ignore the red fog now spreading throughout the tumble of the lowering storm clouds. The color of fresh blood had leeched into each snowflake and slowly built an undisturbed layer of lace across the ground. Each drop stung his face and weighted down his hair.

Sam watched it congeal and slide to drip off the end of the axe blade.

At first, he was only going to chop through the scattering of logs he found lying around. But after those were demolished he pulled the stiff canvas tarp off the stack and didn’t stop until every single log was reduced to kindling. Hefting the rusty tool over his head, he tried to silence the sound of his brother’s pleading voice repeating in his mind.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and felt hot tears run down his frozen cheeks.

_You let me go._

He swung the axe down so hard the metal sliced through the chunk of pine and sunk into the chopping block underneath. Yanking it free he automatically replaced the piece with another despite the knee-high pile growing behind him. When the rotten wood began to fall apart and shatter into useless splinters, he realized the ragged fog of his breath was coming too quickly. He stuck the axe into the frozen ground and sagged onto the step of the porch. Absently wiping his throbbing hands on his thighs, he was dully surprised to see smears of dark blood left behind on the damp denim.

_I have to get out of here._

His gaze went to the loom of forest that started at the overgrown yard’s edge. It looked as undisturbed and desolate as the rise of mountains hidden on the horizon. The storm had picked up while he’d been working and was now blowing the heavy snow in swirling eddies up into the sky. His hands shook from exertion, his arms and legs shuddering from the wet and cold.

A red haze dripped between the trees and oozed down to the pristine white of the forest floor.

He knew the sight of it should have evoked more of a reaction from him. The curse his brother had released was on the wind and in the ground. There was no use in running from an entity formed of instincts like fear and anger. The strange fog filled the frozen muddy trials and languidly seeped into the air he breathed. Sam stuttered on his next inhale, his bleeding hands dripping bright red drops on the leather of his boots. It felt good to sit down.

It calmed him.

It soothed all his panic away.

He looked over his shoulder uncertainly at the dilapidated house. He could go plug in that fire hazard of the ancient electrical heater and sit down for a while. There were plenty of his father’s things left to go through. There was more than enough to take up an entire afternoon, the night, and another solid day before he’d have to stop to sleep—

_Don’t leave me here._

Sam dazedly shook his head back and forth. He knew that his short break from the campsite had kept him away much longer than he had intended.

He blinked in bafflement at the time on his watch.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he didn’t understand how he could have possibly spent an entire two hours just standing here chopping firewood. Waving the lingering red mist away from his face, a surge of panic got him swiftly to his feet.

But his thoughts were inexplicably drawn back to the confines of the house.

A thought, as gentle and tenuous as a whisper, wrapped around his mind and softly dissolved his worry. One thousand different meaningless duties settled in his brain and quietly urged him to turn around. A descending quiet diffused his concern, the logical choice of seeking the warmth inside unyielding and unquestionable. His urgency dampened, he was half way up the back steps before he realized what he was doing.

“No… No… _No._ ”

Clutching the railing, Sam forced himself to step back down into the yard. Every move away from the house and towards the campsite felt wrong and unnatural. All his senses screamed out in warning that he should stop, all his muscles wanted to seize and prevent him from going any further.

But Sam knew it was all a trick, a ploy, and a diversion.

With a roar, he broke into a run straight for the dark margin of the woods. The first several yards brought the overwhelming sense of panic so high that his vision went white with fear. But just as he stumbled into the tree line, the sensations vanished like cobwebs in a flame. Panting for breath, he gripped the soggy trunks of the trees and waited for the rest of the conjured fright to fade.

For a bunch of make believe, it sure as hell felt real.

Sam swallowed against another lurch of nausea when he realized he’d just gotten a small taste of what the curse had done to his brother. All the adrenaline fueling his terror would be an even better ride with some hallucinations and a voice telling you what to do. Sam picked up his pace as he fought through the frozen branches heavy with snow.

Sliding to a halt in the campsite’s clearing, he saw the sputtering remains of the violet fire before he saw his brother was gone.

Lines of fine ash fell in streaks across the pine needles, the network of shimmering ropes disintegrated in precise slashes along the ground. Bobby was almost exactly where he’d left him. But the man had recently been on the losing side of a one sided struggle. A line of blood marked his temple and his awkward posture on the ground revealed pain he wasn’t wasting effort articulating.

“B-Bobby?” Sam knelt beside him and pushed back his jacket looking for blood. The snow around them was thankfully a pure white. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m fine.” Bobby snarled. “You go find him!”

Sam saw the man wince as he tried to push his weight up by his left foot. The boot strings were unlaced and his ankle swollen badly so he could move his leg without a grimace.

“B-But Bobby.” Sam stammered. “What do I do?”

The old hunter pushed him into action with a rough shove to the shoulder.

“Whatever you can.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dull red sky had deepened into a glaring red.

Sam walked cautiously through the undergrowth as he scanned the trees around him.

Now that the curse’s tricks had been exposed the thing no longer made any effort to hide itself. The distraction it had used to delay Sam was now gone. Once he had figured it out, it had taken its two-bit parlor tricks and evaporated like a shadow in a spot-light.

Sam followed his brother’s familiar boot tracks. The tracks wandered aimlessly for a few dozen meters and then abruptly stopped. For no reason Sam could discern, Dean seemed to have suddenly changed his mind and headed due north. That point of the compass didn’t have much besides a mountain range and a wilderness deep enough to make anything disappear.

The boot prints continued up a steep ridge.

He knew Dean hadn’t chosen this path himself. It was that voice speaking to him. Urging him towards a secluded place where he could finish himself without interruption. Climbing up a moss covered boulder, Sam tried not to think of how little time his brother needed to vanish like a ghost. Sliding down the other side of the rock, his hand came away with a slick red substance he’d seen many times before.

“I know you’re here,” Sam said softly. “I can see you.”

No longer interested in worming its way through Sam’s thoughts, the thing simply let its bare flesh been seen draped between the branches. Hanging smooth like untreated animal skins, it slipped from tree to ground, bush to sky. Its pace was eager and jovial as its one and only task was rapidly reaching its climax.

Sam slid down another steep embankment, following his brother’s messy trail. There were broken branches, churned earth, and perfect prints in the frigid mud that a trained man would never leave behind. Sam charged forward regardless of the noise and tracks he left in his wake. It wasn’t as if he had the element of surprise working for him. He didn’t have any more of a clue regarding their terrain than his brother did.

The pale winter sun was starting to slant down through the trees. It would be night soon and Sam’s slim chances of finding his brother were about to be cut in less than half. Standing breathless in yet another small clearing, Sam looked in all ten directions his brother could have taken off for next. Growling in frustration he decided to try a different approach. Taking a deep breath, he figured he might as well start shouting in the hopes that Dean was crazy enough to start yelling back.

“ _Dean!_ Dean, where are you!”

Lifting his hands to his mouth he shouted again and again until he completed a 360-degree turn in the pine needles. He yelled until it ached to even speak, the dry winter air filling his lungs and rasping in the back of his throat.

“Hey!! You hear me?”

It was then that he saw that the red thing that had teased and taunted him through the woods had begun to change. The shapes convalescing amongst the trees had started to solidify. Frozen in place, Sam took one step back before he realized his wide eyes were staring back at something of the same but of a much larger size.

A gigantic face hung between the trees.

The nebulous substance had formed into a blank eyed visage of a smiling mask. It appeared thick like wax, soft and malleable. The mouth sagged between an expression of ecstasy and revulsion. The wide set eyes were two vacant holes burned black into pits. In their depths pinpoints of light ignited the hollow skull like a lamp.

“Where is he?” Sam growled.

The face hung in immobile silence.“Tell me where he—“

_Shhhhhh._

The hushed voice was subdued, as if afraid of any disturbance.

_He is so close now._

Sam swung around, afraid to see a slack body hanging from one of the towering boughs of pine.

Do you see him? 

The evergreens parted as if by invisible hands, the branches gently displaced almost in a perfect rectangle like a window frame. 

_He is so close._

Sam staggered towards it, blinking at the light the forest kept above the dense thicket of its cover. Sam could have walked along side this path all day and never known there was a sizable lake just a few feet beyond the undergrowth. 

The frozen sheet of ice stretched out for at least a mile, the smooth surface interrupted occasionally by the branches of a tree fallen in the shallow waters. The sky above swirled scarlet, bright and mixing with the storm clouds. A strip of stony beach was crowded with pines, the meandering shore curving into small inlets and bays. Sam took one step forward, testing if the ice was as solid as the earth behind him. 

The creature withdrew into the shadows of the trees. 

He took another step on the slick surface. 

“Dean?” 

His brother standing too far away to tell what kind of condition he was in. But upright and breathing was all Sam cared about at the moment. 

"It’s me!” Sam heard his voice, possessed by a calm he didn’t have. “It's just me.” 

His brother looked strange standing alone on a field of fractured ice. 

"Dean!” Sam called out again. “W-Why don’t we—“ 

“I don’t want to go anywhere.” 

“Okay,” Sam quickly said. “We’ll just talk. That’s all I want. I just want to talk.” 

Sam studied the groaning ice he was standing on. It was pock marked from rain and rife with fissures. Entire pieces had separated from the coastline and were nothing more than slush. It was thick enough to take his weight so far, but the entire lake was just a rotted patchwork of sinkholes. Sam swallowed nervously when the next step he made caused an air pocket to billow under his feet. The bubble shimmered like liquid mercury before it dissipated to either side of him. Holding his arms out for balance, Sam gritted his teeth as his next step created a horrible crackling noise through the silence. 

The wind gusted across the lake’s surface and tossed the snow up into the air like glittering confetti. 

“You should go back, Sammy.” 

Dean had somehow gotten closer. 

Now only several yards away, Sam could see his brother's face. The whites and color of his eyes were still completely missing, but it had elongated into gashes up and down his cheeks. Like a knife point had been taken from hairline straight down to his chin, Dean’s eyes were lost in the raw red gleam of blood and bared flesh. There were traces of his footsteps behind him that made Sam’s heart skip a beat in his chest. The trail had left a series of holes in the soft ice, each footprint of Dean’s passage pooling slowly with near freezing water. 

“D-Dean, you gotta to listen to me,” Sam said carefully. “We’re just gonna go-go over there okay? On the bank? We’ll just talk for a while and then—" 

“You think I’m crazy,” Dean laughed, his tears and spittle spattered crimson on the white snow. “You think I’ve lost my shit.” 

“Maybe a little,” Sam attempted another step forward. “You’re standing in the middle of a fucking lake.” 

Dean tilted his head back and laughed some more. 

But Sam could see something else there that was lucid along with all the madness. No matter how lost his brother was and no matter how far gone, he was still right there; just a few centimeters under it all and struggling to surface. Sam suddenly looked down at the shifting ice under his feet. With a flash of revelation, he looked back up at Dean. Maybe his brother just needed a little thawing. A crack there, a sledgehammer right down the center... 

“This will all be over in a second.“ Dean assured him. “I like messy but… way out here? This place doesn’t leave a guy much of a choice.” 

Sam met the hard look that glowed behind the red eyes. 

“You could have used the knife,” Sam said. “Plenty of guns around. Think I even saw a few cliffs on my way over here—“ 

“Shut up.” 

Sam breathlessly watched as Dean crumpled to one knee, his hands clasped tightly over his ears. 

“You could have done it a hundred times already but you didn’t,” Sam continued. “Man, you can get it done even when text books say it’s impossible so don’t give me any of that crap. If you really wanted to off yourself we wouldn’t even be standing here right now—“ 

“Shut the hell up!!” 

But it was there. Sam heard it. Dean’s muted voice buried under the curse and its noise. His brother’s rationality had brushed up against the thinnest parts of the creature’s membrane, stretched tight to keep in all that rage and ire all in one place. 

“It’s making you do it, Dean,” Sam hazarded a step closer. “I bet you love having some dime store hoodoo burrowed in your head. Some third rate spook callin’ the shots.” 

His brother slumped forward on his knees, his fists and face rolling in the freezing slush. 

“Don-Don’t leave me here,” Dean murmured into the ground. “Please...” 

“Sun’s going down soon," Sam murmured up at the hazy horizon above the pine forest. “Then all this will be over.” 

Dean struggled back to his feet, his breath fogging rapidly out into the twilight air. He staggered backwards towards where the opaque ice was as thin as paper. 

“Wait.” Sam demanded. “Don’t move.” 

Dean’s gashed eyes seemed to clear for a moment, consider Sam and their surroundings as if he’d just noticed them for the first time. His brother looked down in bewilderment at his shaky hands and started to wipe them across his dirt-streaked jacket. Sam maintained the tone in his voice. It was the one dad always used when they were danger but he didn’t want anyone to lose focus. 

Sam held up his hands in a gesture of compliance. 

“I can hear it laughing at you. I can hear it laughing at me because it thinks there’s nothing I can do.” 

Dean blinked at him uncertainly. 

“But the bastard is wrong,” Sam straightened and looked around. “There is something I can do.” 

“S-Sammy?” 

Sam took in a deep breath. 

With one hard step sideways he felt the fragile ice beneath him give way. 

The shock of the water blinded him but he fought the instinct to claw towards the murky light. 

He kept his eyes wide open, the feel of his flesh freezing with the contact of the icy water kept his consciousness from slipping into black. There was a perfect circle above him, the winter sun dim and blemished red. His throat hitched, and his chest spasmed, denying his next lungful of air. He exhaled a trail of bubbles to accelerate the decent, his padded jacket filling slowly and providing more weight. 

After the searing burn of the water there was something almost pleasant that replaced it instead. Sam struggled to keep his eyes open as the euphoria oxygen deprivation slowly spread through his limbs and body. The rosy sense of well being he’d heard many drowning victims recall now made perfect sense. 

The visions of angels about were nothing but the halo of light around the hole in the ice. The serene warmth was hypothermia settling in every nerve and vessel. As he sunk lower, the light grew less, the dark below him hungrily swallowing him inch by inch. 

_Dean, don’t leave me here._

The gauzy circle in the ice above him was completely eclipsed, causing the faltering shaft of light reaching down into the depths to blink out. The total darkness threw all of Sam’s composed calm to pieces. He did start to thrash then, his body overcoming all coherent thought and survival becoming its only function. His limbs weakly cut through nothing, his hands open to an empty void in every direction. 

_Snow falling lazily from the gray sky and slowly burying this lake. Drifting under this ice. Silence._

Sam caught glimpses of it in the black, a sheet of red whipping through the water like a predatory animal. He saw the laughing face form and fade as the bloody film engulfed him, smothering him even further, tangling around his arms and legs. He violently shook his head from side to side as it rushed tightly over his mouth and nose. By the time it had seeped over his eyes, he could no longer move to try to dislodge it. 

The lake tugged him steadily closer to its muddy bottom. 

_All this won’t matter. It won’t matter._

Numbly, as the first mouthful of frigid water passed over his lips, he also felt something else lock down on the collar of his jacket. The strong hand wadded his coat up in a firm grip and started hoisting him upwards. He had drifted too far, sunk too low to save himself. 

But saving himself had never been the point. 

_~~~_

Someone was smoking a cheap cigar. 

The smell of smoldering leaves seemed real even though no other sensations upon waking did. Sam fought his heavy eyelids, finally opening them to find the darkness flashing with firelight. Awareness sank in slowly and terribly. The sluggish sound of his breathing was deafening. 

When he attempted movement, there was pain. 

_"Unghhh..."_

His limbs felt heavy and detached, as though they belonged to someone else. Sam managed to turn his head, eyelids fluttering at the confusion of shadow and light. His eyes focused on a tiny orange point, glowing like a firefly between Dean’s lips. 

"Haven't smoked one of these in while," Dean held the remainder of the stogie between thumb and forefinger. "Nothin’ like a special occasion to get out the good stuff." 

"Are- Are you... _you?_ " 

“Actually I found the smokes in dad’s storage,” his brother’s shoulders hitched in a laugh. “When will I ever learn?” 

Sam blinked up at him. 

“Yer okay.” Dean’s hand held him down firmly over his chest. “It’s okay.” 

He stared into clear green eyes. The raw gleam was gone, leaving the whites bloodshot and tired. Dean had looked a lot worse after a sleepless, boozing weekend bender. Sam couldn't resist proving it for himself, and lifted a hand to touch his brother’s face. Dean looked like he wanted to move away from his hand but he didn’t. His brother's gaze flickered down and away when Sam’s fingertips explored the puffy bruised skin beneath his eyes and down his grazed jaw. 

“Tho, I think you swallowed ‘bout half that damn lake back there. I should know because you puked most of it right back up into my face.” 

Sam's body started to shake he began to feel what seemed like tiny shards of glass beneath his skin, warm blood throbbing through his trembling limbs. He was dimly aware his clothes were gone, replaced with fleece blankets, and warmed by a comfortable fire. He recognized it was the hearth from the old house they’d spent all those days squatting in. 

They were safe. 

Sam smiled as the fire crackled and hissed, gripping the blankets closer to his shivering body. Good thing he’d chopped all that goddamn fire wood. 

“That water was pretty cold,” Dean took Sam’s wrist and put it back under the blanket. “Didn’t think I would get either one of us all the way back here.” 

Sam’s teeth clenched in agony as he tried to sit up. "H-hurts." 

"You should try ‘an get some sleep." 

He wanted to close his eyes. That wouldn't be hard to do. But not yet.

"W-Where’s Bobby?" 

"He'll be back." 

Sam watched his brother settle back towards the light of the fire. The trip through the ice had done its damage to him too. His movements were slow, his skin pale and a thick wool coat too large for him wasn’t stilling the tremors in his hands. 

“He packed up dad’s stuff from storage. All of it.” Dean tossed another log on the blaze. “Even that crap I stashed in the glove box.” 

“But, some of that stuff is toxic, if someone dug it up again it could—“ 

“Bobby knows a trick or three," Dean said. “If you bury something right it’ll stay there.” 

Sam fought his eyes from closing again. He had a childish urge to ask his brother to keep talking aloud. When they were kids anything used to do just fine. The back of an album cover. Some old outdated magazine. He never cared about what stories Dean found where, he just wanted the sound of a voice to follow him into sleep. 

But he still needed to know something. 

“What—“ Sam’s voice slurred with exhaustion. “What happened?” 

The curse. The pull of its voice. The red tears streaming down Dean’s face. 

“Bobby’s callin’ it a conundrum,” Dean rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “I like the word accident a whole lot better.” 

“It wasn’t gonna stop until you were dead.” 

“I saw you go in,” Dean chucked the cigar into the fireplace. “A-And well... you can figure out the rest.” 

Sam sank back in his bedding and debated the wording and intent of stupid backward curses. It was quite a prize to steal a life that willingly sought its end. But it was quite a loss when that same life was salvaged by risking everything to save another. Everything became equal within the cosmic realm of checks and balances. And it was all contained in the holy tracts given to man in regards to his freely given will. 

As far as Sam was concerned, it was all perfect lunacy. 

Dean slowly stood up, slightly unsteady on his feet, but solid just the same. 

“Just get some sleep.”

Sam let his eyes close this time. 

And while his body was weary, he couldn’t drift away until he heard his brother settle back into the chair nearby and start humming. That was another trick his brother had picked up when the comfort of voices was no longer an option. 

Half the time Sam didn't recognize the tune until sleep came. 

Sometimes he did. 

Didn’t matter, he thought fuzzily as dreams started to cloud his eyes and dim his mind, because as long as he could hear it, they both would be fine. 

_the end_


End file.
